The Path Home
by flowerpicture
Summary: Stendan, after Brendan goes to prison.


**AN: I know, I know. I've been so unexpectedly busy the past few days. I had a spare couple of hours this afternoon and instead of finishing all the fics I'd already promised, I wrote this instead. Sorry!**

::: :::

When the visiting order arrives, his first instinct is to tear it up. A startling fit of rage thundering into his system and making him _hate_, just for a few moments.

Then it subsides, and he slumps onto the floor, clutching the visiting order to his chest. And he cries.

::: :::

He hasn't seen him for weeks, not since that day the police tore them apart in the hospital. Hasn't seen him, heard from him, heard anything about him. The last time they spoke, Brendan told him to go live his life. To forget what they had with each other. Ste did neither of those things, because Brendan never wanted to see him again, and that was something he didn't know how to deal with. His mind and body and everything shut down against the weight of devastation and he's been existing on nothing but alcohol and anger.

Only now Brendan wants to see him. All of a sudden, with no explanation.

His heart beats wildly and with painful force behind his ribs as he sits here waiting, staring at the metal gate through which all the inmates appear to greet their loved ones. So many have arrived already; so many couples and families and friends around him, lots of tears and smiles and careful hugs.

Brendan's not appeared yet.

Every noise is amplified. The ticking of the clock on the wall above the door. The _clink-clink_ of keys dangling from a guard's belt loop. The sniffles of tears all around him. His own blood roaring in his ears.

Then the gate opens again, and everything falls completely silent.

He's got a beard now, again. Thick and black and obscuring half of his face. Ste wants to shave it off, and he wants to touch it. He wants to touch all of him, and he wants to cry, and he wants to flee the room and throw himself into Brendan's arms and he wants to do nothing at all. Amidst all the conflicting desires, he sits still and waits.

Brendan sits opposite him, the scrape of his chair deafening. His movements are cautious and careful and there's a jitteriness to his hands as he brings them together on the table top.

His eyes are steady though. Fixed on Ste and unwavering. Full of all the love Ste can't handle, can't look away from.

"You told me not to visit you," Ste says, because he has to break the silence, can't stand the staring any longer. His voice comes out scratchy and weak and part of him thinks he should make some effort to sound stronger. But he wants Brendan to know he's not coping without him. Wants Brendan to know he's been left a wreck, a shadow of himself, lost and alone and heartbroken.

When Brendan speaks, his tone is low and full of unexpected grief. "I know." He's using one thumbnail to pick at the other and Ste watches it, then glances at his knuckles, checking for trouble. There's nothing to suggest Brendan's finding it hard in here, but he knows with a painful tug on his heart that it's not true.

"So why am I here now?"

Brendan sits forward a little in his seat, puts more weight on his elbows, hands clasped. All Ste needs to do is put his own hands on the table and they'll be touching. But he can't move.

"My brief thinks I'll be out of here in less than two years."

It's like someone's taken a leaden weight and launched it into his chest. All the air knocks out of him and all he can do is stare, wide-eyed, at Brendan's face, while his vision swims with moisture.

He can't get any words out, can't think of a single one to utter.

"We go to trial," Brendan continues, dropping his voice conspiratorially, "and we show the video of my dad confessing to what he did." He swallows at that and averts his gaze for an instant, and Ste takes the opportunity to wipe his eyes, scrub away the tears threatening to fall. "I tell them self-defence, Cheryl comes in as witness… It's manslaughter with a minimum sentence. Three to six years at most."

Ste's throat has swollen shut, his chest seized tight, and he has to fight past the constriction and the suffocation to get his voice out. "The other murders you confessed to—"

"They didn't hear half of what I said," Brendan says, shaking his head as if to dismiss the whole thing, "and I wasn't in a place of sanity after what just happened. I wanted it all to end."

Ste winces, a hot spark of pain shooting straight through his heart. Brendan notices, and his expression crumples, just a flash of agony and guilt. His voice is softer when he next speaks.

"They can't pin anything else on me."

Ste stares at him. None of it seems real. Sitting here looking at Brendan, hearing his voice, hearing him say he could be out by next Christmas if he keeps his head down. That this doesn't have to be the end of them. It's little more than a bump in the road.

"Steven." He looks scared now and Ste doesn't understand it, doesn't know why, until Brendan opens his mouth again and lets the words spill, a hitch in his voice. "I asked you here because I need to know… I need to know if you'll be there waiting for me."

It's a stupid question.

::: :::

The visits leading up to the trial are quiet. Neither of them dares express any true hope because what if it goes wrong? What if the jury doesn't swing in his favour and he goes down for ten, twenty, life? It's impossible to think of the future when it might not even be there and so when Ste visits, they talk quietly about the kids and the books Brendan's reading and any kind of current events Ste's aware of. They don't talk about being together, about what they'll do when Brendan's out, what their plans are. Ste's not brave enough, and Brendan's barriers go up whenever either of them inadvertently hints at the future.

They don't touch. They can't, not if Brendan wants to avoid trouble.

"Who's your friend?" a tall beast of an inmate asks as he passes their table one afternoon.

Brendan hesitates for only an instant. "My cousin."

His eyes are full of apology after, but Ste gets it, and he doesn't blame him.

"I need you to see my solicitor and sign some papers," Brendan tells him during another visit. The trial's rushing closer and they've barely talked of anything but the case for weeks now. "Make it legal for you to take care of everything for me."

Ste's been looking after the club for a while now but he's been hindered by his lack of legal standing in the business. Cheryl's had to step in a time or two, get on the phone from Ireland and sweet talk certain suppliers.

"The club," Brendan elaborates, "my place, your flats—all of it. I need you to look after all of it."

He wants to hold Brendan's hand, reassure him that he'll still have his life to return to when this is all over, that Ste will care for it all as if it's own. But he can't touch Brendan here, so he smiles instead and tells him he will, of course he will.

Brendan gets four years for manslaughter. With his time in remand taken into account, he'll be out in eighteen months.

When Ste hears the news, he forgets how to breathe.

::: :::

He's elated during their next visit, a ball of energy and joy that he can't quite contain. "I'll visit every week," he tells him, "and I'll write to you all the time so you have something from me for when you're feeling a bit lonely. And you can ring me every day, don't matter when, I'll always answer—"

Brendan's smiling, soft and warm, letting Ste talk as if it feels good for him in some way. When Ste stops to take a breath, Brendan's face turns more serious and he leans forward in his chair, puts a hand closer to Ste's on the table, not quite touching, but near enough.

"I'm gonna get help in here, Steven," he tells him. "I'm gonna sort myself out, be the man you deserve."

Ste has to wipe his eyes, and he has to tell Brendan's he's dead proud of him, and he has to touch his hand just for a moment, a quick brush of his fingers against the back of Brendan's knuckles.

Brendan presses their knees together beneath the table and smiles at him.

::: :::

Ste moves himself into Brendan's place. He doesn't ask permission, but it turns out he didn't need to.

"Make it a home again," Brendan tells him when Ste lets him know what he's done. "Fill it with all the kids' stuff. Get it messy. I don't care. Just—that's what I want to come back to."

He rents out his own flat to a group of students and has a moment of feeling a bit out of his depth when he has to sort out contracts and rent books and solicitor fees. He's not Brendan; he's not full of power and control and business sense. But he manages to make a decent job of being a landlord and makes a better job of running the club and then, somehow, he manages to get his kids back, with the full knowledge on both sides that Brendan will be involved.

He tells Amy everything. He shows her the recording of Seamus confessing to his sins that night in front of Walker—a copy of the file someone had made at some point and he'd got hold of. She watches it with a hand on her mouth and her eyes wide and glistening and when it's over she doesn't speak for a long few minutes.

He explains about the help Brendan's getting, the therapy for his anger and trauma, and he lets her in on the secret of Seamus' death, that Brendan's in there for Cheryl, but that he did kill Walker, killed him to protect their kids.

She can't argue in the face of all the information but she's wary. So he takes her with him to visit Brendan. By the end of the visit they're not friends, but she allows Ste to take the kids for the weekend and then every weekend thereafter, and there's no talk of stopping it when Brendan's released.

There is talk in the prison of Brendan's relationship with the lad who visits him so often—the cousin, the one who might not be a cousin at all. It causes rumblings and the threat of aggravation and Ste has to stay away for a while, a few weeks, only communicating with Brendan over the phone every few days or so. It's the hardest period of Brendan's incarceration for the both of them but when Mitzeee comes over from America to visit her sister, Ste brings her to the prison, and she hugs Brendan tight and kisses him on the mouth and sits for the hour holding his hand across the table. All eyes are on her, even those belonging to inmates who are being visited by their own wives and girlfriends.

The rumours stop, and Brendan becomes a bit of a legend in the cells, and Ste's able to go back every week again, as the cousin who's in charge of his affairs.

::: :::

The first year flies by.

Ste has one wobble. He's never gone so long without sex, without the feel of another person, and touching himself only gets him so far and it's a lonely experience. He can't even look at Brendan the wrong way let alone put a hand on him during visits, and frustration starts itching at him. He finds himself responding to the advances of a man one night in the club, after he's had too much to drink and feeling a little loose. He lets the man crowd in close and murmur into his ear and touch his waist in a manner that suggests he'd like to touch more. For half a second he considers taking this man into the office—a random, nameless fuck that no one needs to know about. But the impulse is brief and immediately discarded and he tells Brendan about it the following week, full of remorse for his near indiscretion, promising him it won't happen again, that he would never even think of it. He's just frustrated, is all, and he misses being with Brendan so much. Misses the feel of him.

"We knew this wasn't going to be easy," Brendan tells him. There's anger in him; Ste can see it. But he's not expressing it. And he's not blaming Ste for what he did. "It's okay, Steven," he says, and it's obvious he means it. "It's okay."

They press their knees together beneath the table, like they always do, and Ste forgives himself.

::: :::

He doesn't sign over his half of the deli in the end. He becomes a silent partner, takes a lower stake in the profits and lets Doug do what he wants with the place. They have nothing else to do with each other after that. When Doug calls in on Ste at the club and tells him he wants to sell and move on, Ste readily agrees. Two months later he pockets his half of the cash and says goodbye to a significant—but not exactly missed—part of his life. The following divorce is quiet and painless and one day Doug's there in the village and the next he's gone.

It's weird, no longer being married, and Brendan's eyes light up when Ste tells him about it.

::: :::

Declan calls, asks Ste if he can come stay for a while. "I want to see my dad," he says, and there's no part of Ste that wants to deny him.

"What about your brother?"

Because seeing one of his boys would mean the world to Brendan but seeing both would be a dream come true.

There's an awkward silence on the other end of the phone. "Not yet," Declan says eventually. "Mum can't stop me, but—"

"Yeah." Ste nods to himself, sighing quietly. "Yeah, I get it."

Declan arrives the following week. Ste doesn't say anything to Brendan about it, doesn't want to ruin the surprise, finds it nearly impossible to keep the secret during the visit before Declan's arrival. Wants so badly to give Brendan this extra bit of light to cling on to but he knows the wait will be worth it.

He gets Declan settled into Cheryl's old room and it's a bit awkward at first, but it only takes the Xbox and a takeaway and a couple of beers for them both to loosen up. By the time it comes to visit Brendan two days later, Ste feels as if he's always had Declan in his life.

He'd done the right thing, keeping the surprise. The look on Brendan's face when he sees who Ste's brought with him is something he will never forget. They hug for a long time, father and son, and Ste sits quietly and smiling while he watches them catch up.

"We need to work on your mum," Ste tells Declan later over burgers and milkshakes. "Get your brother over here."

Declan agrees, and a month later, after endless phone calls and one last-minute day trip to Ireland for a face-to-face attempt at victory, Ste has both boys as houseguests for a few days, in addition to his own kids off school on their half term.

Ste can't go with them to the prison, doesn't want to expose his kids to it, so Declan takes Paddy on his own and Ste sits at home anxious and desperate to know how it's going. They come home a couple of hours later and they say it went fine and Paddy's already talking about coming to stay when Brendan gets out, and they spend the evening playing board games with Leah and Lucas and eating too much junk food. For the first time, Ste sees his family as it should be, missing one vital component but not for long, not long left now at all.

When Brendan calls him later that evening, Ste can hear the emotion in his voice. "Thank you," he says, tight and choked and making Ste want to hold him so close. "For bringing my boys back to me. Thank you, Steven."

Ste has to fight past the lump in his throat to tell Brendan all about the kids playing together, how good his boys are with the little ones, how it's like they're a family and he'll be here soon, so soon, a part of it. "Won't be long until we're all together, eh, Bren."

He hears Brendan take a deep breath, say, "You have no idea how much I—" He doesn't finish his sentence, doesn't seem able to. Ste understands it anyway.

::: :::

Horror wrenches through him at the sight of Brendan's face covered in cuts and bruises and he can't help the gasp, or the way his hands shake when he has to stop himself reaching out for him.

A new guy trying to earn respect, chose Brendan to show what he could do. Laid into him in the yard, a full minute of it before guards broke their way through to finish it.

"You didn't fight back?"

Brendan always fights back. Ste can never imagine him laying down and taking a kicking.

But Brendan shakes his head, and his eyes are fierce with startling determination. "Nothing's gonna stop me getting out of here when I'm supposed to."

He controlled his anger, and he kept his priorities in focus, and he took a hit to his dignity and safety in order to ensure his release date isn't compromised.

Ste's never been prouder of him.

::: :::

In the end, he's out in twenty-one months. The last few weeks are torture, dragging to a standstill, as if time's just stopped. Ste keeps himself as busy as possible in an attempt to make the world tick by faster but each day feels like a week, each week feels like a year. Every morning he wakes up one day closer but that day always lasts an eternity.

Brendan's the same, but taking it better. The light at the end of the tunnel manages to keep his spirits up even if the time seems endless; and while Ste's so preoccupied with how _long_ everything's taking, all of a sudden it's a week before the release and he has no idea how they got there.

"Seven days," he whispers down the phone, sounding almost awed. He remembers when seven months felt like no time at all, and here he is seven sleeps away from having Brendan in his arms for the first time in nearly two years. "What d'you wanna eat when you get here? I'll cook you anything you want."

Brendan laughs low and almost giddy. "Anything. Everything."

"I'll do a big shop," Ste says, grinning, eyes watering as his heart swells in his chest. "Get all your favourites. Gonna spoil you rotten, Bren, you just wait. You'll be begging me to leave you alone after a few hours."

"I doubt that." There's an exuberant warmth to Brendan's tone, a reigned-in excitement. "Never leaving your side again."

Ste wipes at his eyes. "That better be a promise."

They decide that Ste should skip the visit this week, Brendan arguing there's little point in all the hassle of busses and trains when they'll be seeing each other in a few days, and for far longer than an hour.

He spends the week making sure everything's right for Brendan's return, getting the flat and the club in order, cleaning and accounts and the banking, food shopping and paying bills and briefing the staff on the changes ahead. One or two were Brendan's recruits but the rest have never met him, hired by Ste and only aware of Brendan by stories and rumour. He doesn't want Brendan's return to work to be any more awkward or difficult than it has to be for him so he tells the staff in no uncertain terms that if there's anyone who doesn't think they can work with him, they should leave now. He only loses one member of staff. A win in his book, considering their soon-to-reappear boss is a convicted killer.

He puts Cheryl off. She wants to be there when he gets out but Ste manages to convince her otherwise. Brendan specifically asked for a quiet few days just the two of them before he had to face the world and Cheryl is anything but quiet. She'd be badgering him to get up and out and on with his life five minutes after he stepped through the prison gates and as much as Brendan loves his sister, Ste knows he's doing the right thing by delaying her visit. Eventually she agrees to come a fortnight later and bring the boys along with her—something for Brendan to look forward to after he's settled in.

He goes to bed on his last night alone completely consumed with the knowledge that it _is _his last night alone. That for the rest of his life he never has to sleep by himself again. Brendan will be here, every night, the two of them in bed together. The warmth and comfort of it, the shared moments and the late-night chats and falling asleep to movies. The sex. The intimacy.

He's going to have sex with Brendan in less than twenty-four hours.

Brendan alluded to it in their phone call earlier that day. "You ready for me?" he asked, and while the question related to the house and the club and everything else, Ste heard the underlying tone there, the heat of suppressed arousal and need bubbling under the surface.

He's so ready he physically _aches_ with it.

The thought of it keeps him awake for most of the night, desperate to touch himself but wanting to wait, keep it for Brendan. Then the thoughts transferred to other things, ideas and desires that had nothing to do with sex—holding Brendan, drinking tea with him in the mornings, watching TV with him, going shopping together, planning holidays and Christmases and visits from the kids. Arguing about who's doing the washing up, why there's no hot water left, which one of them has had all the milk. Everything a couple goes through together. Everything they can have now, in their future.

By the time he gets up on little more than two hours' sleep, he feels properly awake for the first time since that day in the hospital, full of energy and hope.

::: :::

Brendan comes out at just past lunchtime. He was supposed to be released at ten but there was a delay of some kind and Ste's been stood here chewing his nails and pacing the concrete and trying not to freak out.

But the gate finally opens, releasing a small group of men, all of them rushing forward to greet those waiting to collect them.

Brendan doesn't rush forward. He's the last in line and after he's through the gate, he stops and tilts his face up to the sky and closes his eyes. Ste watches him from his space a few metres away, heart swelling so powerfully he feels as if his chest is going to burst, not wanting to interrupt Brendan's moment, not wanting to hurry him, but absolutely desperate to go to him.

Then Brendan looks across at him. Opens his eyes and scans all the people until his gaze lands on Ste and he looks at him. Just looks at him.

Then, while Ste holds his breath and does everything he can not to cry and make a show of himself, Brendan grins—wide and free and full of elation, and the laugh Ste releases is more like a sob, eyes so watery he can barely see Brendan striding towards him.

The sun's shining when Brendan walks right into his arms and buries his face in his neck and he's shaking, and Ste clings to him and breathes him in and half laughs and half cries and doesn't protest when Brendan squeezes him so tight he feels the strain in his ribs.

And then, finally, Ste takes Brendan home.


End file.
